Estimated reading time 4 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you have writer’s block? Have you run out of melody ideas? Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation gives you the tools to multiply your songwriting ideas.
Melodic variation is an easy way to come up with more music ideas.
- When you have, say, a chorus but not a verse or bridge, try these tips as a jumping off point to new melodic options.
- Some of the variations shown here will sound similar to the original theme, which can be good for instrumental sections.
- Other variations will sound almost like a new theme while still keeping a sense that it relates to the germinal melody.
This post uses technical music words. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the article.
Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation
Similar Sounding Melodic Changes
I’ve chosen Joy to the World as a theme we can use to demonstrate the ten ways to spice up melodies using melodic variation:
- Diminution: This technique simply halves the rhythmic values of the main theme, giving it more drive.
- Augmentation: This changes the theme in a similar way as diminution, but in the opposite direction – doubling the note lengths. Augmentation gives the theme a slower, more stately quality. It can be used for dramatic endings by drawing out the melody.
- Changing Modes: Modes can really change the mood of a melody, but still let it retain its basic character. We could have used a variety of modes, but here I have the minor mode. After the major mode, songwriters use the minor mode the most often. Notice how it creates a darker mood for the theme.
- Changing Time Signatures: This transforms the theme more than the others in this section. Nevertheless, you can still clearly hear the theme in it. However, different time signatures will create very different effects. You will most likely need to adjust the theme to get it to fit. I have included one example, but many other time signatures remain for you to explore.
- Melodic Fragments: A theme can be broken into smaller units called motifs. A motif being a small but complete-ish sounding subphrase contained within a larger melodic phrase. You can then take the motif and put it in a sequence. In other words, you put the motifs at progressively higher or lower pitch levels.
Dissimilar Sounding Melodic Changes
The first five variations in Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation all sound close to the original melody. The next five melodic changes often transform the melody so that you cannot hear as much of the original theme.
- Diatonic Inversion: We’ll look at two types of inversion, the first being diatonic inversion. This takes the theme and turns it upside down. Take all of the intervals in the theme and make them go in the reverse direction. This means the inverted theme stays within the original key. Inversion can be a handy songwriting tool. Especially when you want to break up phrases where you have repeated the same subphrase too many times.
- Exact Inversion: This makes the intervals stay exactly the same as the theme, just in the opposite direction. Exact inversion puts the melody in a different key. Diatonic and exact inversion sound similar to the theme, but not overly so.
- Expanding the Intervals: Expand each interval by one. In other words, 2nds become 3rds, 3rds become 4ths, etc. This creates a fun variation off of the “Joy to the World” theme that sounds similar, but not too similar, to the theme. If a melody lends itself to it, you can also do the opposite and contract all of the intervals by one.
- Deleted Notes: With this you delete notes systematically. Just pick a pattern, cut out notes, and see what happens. This technique will often change the time signature. However, here I chose to adjust the rhythm to stay in common time.
- Retrograde: Simply take your melody and play it backwards. This change obscures the theme so that almost no one will recognize it.
Discussion of the Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation
Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation shows you how to transform your songs in new and exciting ways.
Some melodic changes can be used to structure the subphrases of your melodies. Other melodic changes help you to create new melodies when you run short of ideas.
- For instance, Steve Cropper took the horn part from In the Midnight Hour.
- Then, he reversed it to use as the horn part for Knock on Wood. Thus, these songs give an example of retrograde in RnB.
- If you do not insist on making the retrograde exact, just as Cropper did not, then your melody making options explode.
- In addition, when you take retrograde and combine it with inversion, you have another way to change the melody so that it doesn’t sound much like the theme.
In this post, I arranged the order of the variations so that they gradually became more removed from the sound of the theme.
Music Examples Showing the Ten Ways to Spice Up Melodies Using Melodic Variation
Mobile users: for best results reading the music, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
Sound Track to Ten Ways to Spice Up Your Melodies with Melodic Variation:
Conclusion
This gives you the ten ways to spice up your melodies using melodic variation. If you start with the basic variations and combine them, you can quickly get a staggering number of melody options.
Not all of these will work for every melody. However, it’s a great way to get around writer’s block and get the ideas flowing again.
© 2021 Geoffrey Keith
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